This $60 Smartwatch Is Like Having a Virtual Assistant (and Coach!) on My Wrist
It sometimes feels like there's an endless number of things to think about if you want to reach "peak wellness." Drink those eight glasses of water a day! Move your body every hour! Quit the TikTok scrolling! Hit the hay at a reasonable hour!
Luckily, now we have technology that can keep track of it all for us. Cue the iTouch Wearables Air 3 Smartwatch. Y’all, this watch is a stylish—and budget-friendly—game changer.
I tested out this new kid on the smartwatch block for the past three weeks, and I am hooked. Coming in at just $60, iTouch is on a mission to make smartwatches affordable, giving more people access to the wearable technology that makes self-care—and life—just a little bit simpler. The watch has a built-in pedometer, heart rate monitor, caffeine and water trackers, and more (and is compatible with both iPhones and Androids).
Pros:
- Affordable
- Comfortable
- App is included
- Allows you to set a variety of personal health and fitness goals
Cons:
- The kinds of activities you can track are limited
After downloading the app, syncing to my iPhone, and making my profile, the watch was ready to go in minutes. (The watch and the app are a packaged deal.) I spent some time exploring features and setting personal goals: total hours of sleep, water intake, and even how much coffee I want to have for the day.
A working mom juggling some late hours and early mornings, cutting back on caffeine is a big one for me. The Mayo Clinic reports that the average adult shouldn’t be drinking more than 400 milligrams of coffee per day (around four cups). So, I set my daily max to three and tracked it. Paying attention to this target helped me nix that 3 pm cup when I would have otherwise reached for an afternoon pick-me-up. It took a few days, but I could feel the difference in better sleep after saying sayonara to the extra caffeine.
The same goes for hydration: I set a goal to drink 70 ounces of water a day, and set the amount of reminders I wanted to get in order to keep it up. It was just the gentle nudge I needed to go fill up my water bottle regularly.
I also started out with a goal to hit 10,000 steps a day. The watch shows your step progress, calories burned, and mileage. I set off on daily power walks with stroller and toddler in tow, and felt an extra motivation boost while seeing the steps add up! You can also scroll over on the watch face to peek at your week’s progress, a motivating boost to set mini-competitions with yourself to beat the previous day’s tally.
The workout mode feature on the Air 3 watch syncs with running, elliptical training, cycling, and hiking. Multi-sport mode is meant for basketball, baseball, football, and soccer. However, I'm a cross-country skiing fanatic, and activities like winter sports aren’t easily trackable just yet. (For that you'd need to go for a higher-priced Garmin or Apple Watch.)
With any job that requires being on your computer, it’s always nice to reduce a tiny bit of screen time. I start most mornings with a 10-minute meditation before sipping that first cup of coffee. Rather than find my phone, set the alarm, and run the risk of getting distracted by Instagram or an email, I particularly liked the quick “countdown” setting on the watch. I’d press “10-minute countdown” and sink into mediation mode with my phone and distractions out of sight. Bonus points: I can check my heart rate pre- and post-meditating.
What's more, the Air 3 Smartwatch is forget-you-are-wearing-it comfortable. The sleek silicon sport straps come in some chic, fun colors, and don't rub or make you sweat, making everyday wear easy. Speaking of which: The watch stays charged for at least 24 hours, and has a simple power-saving mode to keep the battery life going even longer if you need.
It's a lot on offer for a smartwatch that's just a fraction of the price of most other fitness tech. And it's no doubt going to be part of my daily routine for a long time to come.
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